On Libraries and New Media, powered by Library Journal and School Library Journal
Seth Finkelstein’s blog alerted me to the fact that the case against Aaron Swartz for stealing JTSOR files had expanded from four felony counts to thirteen. The overview of the revised charges: “Between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to: a. break into a restricted-access computer wiring closet at MIT; b. access […]
In June, nicely timed just before the American Library Association’s Annual Conference, Gluejar announced their first “unglued” title: “Oral Literature in Africa”. Well, now it is available for downloading in several different formats: PDF EPUB Kindle Kindle Daisy Full Text DjVu You can also read it online using the Internet Archive’s book reader. It should […]
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will allow Google to appeal the class action status of the seven-year old Google Inc. v. Authors Guild case, the court announced in an order this morning. Decertifying the case would force Author’s Guild members who dispute the digitization of their works to sue Google individually. Google has argued that many authors have benefited economically from its Google Books project, and whether a scan violated copyright or was protected under fair use doctrine should be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Unglue.it, the new crowdfunding site that encourages authors and publishers to make their ebooks available under a Creative Commons license, today was forced to suspend all active campaigns, after Amazon informed the organization that it would no longer process its pledge payments. Eric Hellman, founder of Unglue.it developer Gluejar Inc., told LJ that an Amazon representative had informed them that crowdfunding, in general, presents regulatory and contractual issues that Amazon is having difficulty keeping pace with. According to their conversation, with the exception of Kickstarter, Amazon Payments will be rejecting business with all new crowdfunding operations.
Arguing that authors have suffered no economic harm from the scanning of more than 15 million books, Google on Friday filed a motion seeking the dismissal of the long-running Authors Guild v. Google case. The motion states that the digitized books, and the Google Books service that they enable, are “not a substitute for the [physical] books themselves—readers still must buy a book from a store or borrow it from a library to read it. Rather, Google Books is an important advance on the card-catalogue method of finding books,” that allows full-text searching.
Have you ever bought a CD or MP3s of the very same album you own on cassette tape or vinyl? Or even, for those of you old enough to remember, the legendary 8-track tape (pictured)? Of course you have. We all have. Or maybe it was a Blu-Ray disc of a favorite movie that you […]
Unglue.it, the crowdfunding platform designed to encourage authors and publishers to make their ebooks available under a Creative Commons license, was officially launched on May 17, featuring campaigns for books from Michael Laser, Joseph Nassise, Nancy Rawles, Budding Reader, and Open Book Publishers.
Showing a movie in K–12 schools isn’t as easy as loading a clip and pushing “play.” That’s because these educators can’t legally make copies from commercial DVDs—even for educational use.
A popular online newsstand devised by a New Hampshire librarian has run afoul of licensing terms and has had to be deactivated at least temporarily.
